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Viktor S. Chernomyrdin, Russia's new Prime Minister, has had a long and successful career as a manager and Cabinet minister in charge of the country's huge gas and energy complex.

What was striking today was how few of the legislators who voted for him know very much about him. But many said they knew the type: a strong, experienced administrator who ran a vital industry with wide international contacts, but who was no Communist Party hack.

Mr. Chernomyrdin (pronounced chair-no-MEER-din) had been brought into the Cabinet of the acting Prime Minister, Yegor T. Gaidar, at the end of May with two other industrialists.

Their inclusion was an attempt to broaden Mr. Gaidar's Government of young, Westernized economists and appease outraged managers of state enterprises, who were struggling with the end of a centralized, command economy and the collapse of the Soviet Union.

But Mr. Chernomyrdin's appointment as a Deputy Prime Minister for fuel and energy was based on competence and caused no controversy. He replaced a Gaidar friend, Vladimir Lopukhin, who was acknowledged to have been a failure in the job.

Mr. Chernomyrdin, now 54, is widely considered "to have worked hard in the Government, and with no political ambitions," Nikolai Vorontsov, a reformist legislator and former Environment Minister, said today.

Mr. Gaidar himself was generous in his comments. "I treat him with respect," he said of his successor. "He sees the priorities of reforms in a slightly different way. But on the whole, Chernomyrdin wants reforms to be carried on. This is why I'm not an out-and-out pessimist about everything we have accomplished being in vain." The reforms, he added, "have a great momentum of their own, and it is very difficult to reverse them."

Mr. Chernomyrdin tried to calm nervousness about the future of Russian reform by asking members of the Gaidar Cabinet to stay on, at least for now, and restating his support for "a market-oriented economy." Emphasis on Production

But in his first interview as Prime Minister, with the Itar-Tass news agency, and in a short statement thanking the Congress of People's Deputies, he gave a clear sign that his "priorities of reforms" will indeed be different and will concentrate on trying to reverse the fall in industrial production, which is down about 25 percent from a year ago.

"No reform will work if we destroy industry completely," he said. "We should switch to another stage -- pay serious attention to production. This will enable us to do more for agriculture, for boosting output. We will rely on basic, key industries that will help revive the rest."

As Mr. Gaidar fought to prevent a continuing and inflationary flow of central bank credits to Russia's struggling factories, he insisted that it was "impossible to produce our way out of crisis" by making goods that no one wanted to buy.

But Mr. Chernomyrdin is expected by Russian lawmakers, Western diplomats and economists to keep the credit tap open, which may risk turning the already dangerous 25 to 30 percent monthly inflation into something close to hyperinflation, or 50 percent a month, by spring.

Andrei L. Golovin, chairman of the Smena faction within Civic Union, considered closest to the industrialists, said simply: "The subsidies will continue, and probably at a higher pace. The same system will perform, but probably a bit more effectively."

Mr. Chernomyrdin said today that his main task is "to deepen reform, but without impoverishing our people. Our people do not deserve this."

His statements implied further efforts to strengthen the social safety net, slowing the rise in unemployment and continuing to raise pensions and salaries in line with inflation. Such policies will inevitably create a bigger deficit, which when added to new credits, is likely to further delay already fading Western hopes for economic stabilization. Westerner Has Hope

But if Mr. Chernomyrdin can help export industries like gas, oil and timber, and crack down on illegal exports, he may begin to bring in the hard currency Russia needs for crucial imports and to support the ruble.

Peter Derby, president of DialogBank here, spoke for many Western executives, saying, "An oil-and-gas guy with Western contacts is a lot better running the country than some military plant director." Mr. Derby expects higher credits, but said they would perhaps be used effectively.

Mr. Golovin said he did not expect many changes of direction from Mr. Chernomyrdin. "This is a troubled time," he said. "Chernomyrdin is not an independent man. I'm not sure to how great an extent Chernomyrdin is Yeltsin's man, but I'm sure Yeltsin can control him."

Deputy Prime Minister Valery Makharadze, who is likely to remain in the Cabinet, said he expected that many of Mr. Gaidar's group would stay on, if asked.

Aleksandr S. Dzhasokhov, a legislator and former Politburo member who served with Mr. Chernomyrdin, said: "He's a practical man, no theoretician, who ran a vast industry and who was the first to turn his ministry into a business concern. Yeltsin has known him for many years."

Viktor Stepanovich Chernomyrdin was born in 1938 in a village in the Orenburg region of Russia, worked as a compressor operator and graduated from technical institute through correspondence courses. He next became a machine operator at an oil refinery, and from 1967-73, worked in the industrial department of the Orsk city Communist Party. He moved into the gas industry and served as an instructor in the party's Central Committee from 1978-82.

That year he was made deputy minister of the gas industry, and in 1985, when Mikhail S. Gorbachev came to power, he became a minister. In 1989, he turned his ministry into the first state corporate complex, Gazprom, and was its chairman before joining the Gaidar Government in May 1992.

In office, he has worked to raise energy prices to finance a declining industry, but not as quickly as Westerners suggested, and he has urged that world prices for fuel should not take effect until the end of 1993, at the earliest. He has two sons, one of whom has followed his father into the gas-processing industry.

A version of this article appears in print on , Section A, Page 16 of the National edition with the headline: Man in the News; Kremlin's Technocrat: Viktor Stepanovich Chernomyrdin. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe